I've just landed in a situation where an old IBM RS/6000 7025 F40 running AIX 4.2.1 has had it's tape drive fail. The tape drive in question is an HP C1533A 4mm 4GB/8GB DAT drive. It repeatedly gets write failures, and my trusty techique of whacking the cleaning tape in hasn't worked. Unfortunately the only person that knew anything about the server is long gone, and as I was the first person to admit to having used *nix (and being the new guy) it has fallen to me to try and find a solution.

I can't find anywhere in New Zealand that can supply me an exact replacement of the tape drive unit but I can source a Sony SDT-5010, which by spec appears to be very similar to the HP device currently installed. My question is basically can I just replace the HP C1533A with a Sony SDT-5010?

1. Is there a reason why the Sony SDT-5010 just wouldn't work in my environment?
2. Are there drivers/files I would need to change to have the new tape drive recognised?

I am a novice with AIX and only have user (rather than server admin) experience with recent Linux distros that do a very good job of 'just working' with most of my hardware at home, so feel free to assume I don't even know the simplest things about AIX. I'm more than happy to provide any further info that might help show how big a problem I'm creating for myself

The tape drive in a RS/6000 is a simple SCSI-drive. In principle you could use anything which has a SCSI connector. Here is a sketch of how to replace it:

*) First get the "location code" of the tape, because it contains the SCSI-ID. Your output will be similar to the example here:
That means: The device is connected to the SCSI-Adapter located at 40-60-00 (this is a specific slot in your machine, it would be a longer article to explain *that* to you) and the SCSI-ID it is using is 4 (-4,0).

*) Second, configure your replacement drive to use this SCSI-ID and connect it to the host adapter. DO THIS ONLY when the machine is switched off and the power connector is plugged out ("off" isn't really off with these machines, like with TV sets with remote controls). If you use the external SCSI-Connector you do not have to unplug the machine of course.

*) switch on the F40. Since you will probably not use an original IBM replacement part the tape drive will be named "other tape drive":
This would mean you are done. If you can't see an output similar to this issue "cfgmgr -v" and watch the output for error messages. Report them back here.

bakunin

thanks for your reply bakunin!

my current drive is also an 'other scsi device' - i'm looking to replace an HP with a Sony, but with the exact same specs. it's looking easier and easier now now i just have to await the arrival of my 'new' tape drive, which should be arriving tomorrow and then i can wreak havoc on my users by blundering my way through a hardware change... hopefully i don't bring down too many important things by accident